Your business needs testimonials from people who love what you offer to get credibility as a company or service provider. Testimonials serve as proof that your products or services live up to their hype, convincing others to give them a try. But, you’ll also need to convince some of your customers to provide those testimonials without being pushy.
7 Ways to Get Customer Testimonials for Your Products or Services
A testimonial can be one of the most powerful ways for your company to showcase its talents. Here are a few tried-and-true ways to ask your customers or clients for testimonials to add to your social media pages, website, or marketing materials.
1. Offer Something in Return
Some customers will gladly write a review or testimonial to gush about your products or services without being asked. Others need a little nudge to remember to share their thoughts. For either group, offering something in exchange for their honest opinions is a nice way to thank them for taking the time to do so.
Send testimonial request emails with an attention-grabbing offer in the headline to recent customers. Offer something like a discount on their next order or a small gift card in exchange for their thoughts.
2. Simplify the Process
Most customers don’t want to be bothered with some complicated process just to write a testimonial. For instance, some companies require customers to create an account before writing a review.
Keep roadblocks to a minimum to encourage more testimonials. Add a link to a quick survey in an email or let customers know what social media channels they can share their thoughts on. You might also ask them to respond to your email with a quick review and use their quotes on your testimonial page.
3. Link Back to Them
One of the best ways to make a testimonial mutually beneficial for you and your clients is to provide a link back to their company along with their name and company name with their testimonial. You get nice words from them, and they’ll get some healthy link juice in the form of backlinks from your website.
4. Monitor Social Media
Social media users share their thoughts about products and services they use all the time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms. Keep your notifications on to know when someone mentions your brand or tags you in a post.
However, untagged mentions aren’t as easy to find, so consider using a social media monitoring tool like Mention that alerts you when someone’s talking about your brand on social media. Reach out to people to see if they’d mind you using a few of their quotes on your website or in marketing materials.
5. Ask on Social Media
Image by harshahars from Pixabay
You can also use the power of social media to ask your followers to leave reviews, comment, or share a post about their experiences with your brand. Sometimes, all it takes is a quick Facebook post kindly asking people to leave an honest review or comment.
You might even include in your post a testimonial that a customer already gave, just for added encouragement. And be sure to follow the basic rules of Facebook post optimization, like adding a branded graphic (this could include the words of the testimonial we just talked about), posting at the best time for your audience, and responding to post comments to increase engagement and reach.
6. Add Ways to Write a Customer Testimonial to Your Website
We talked about simplifying the process for your customers to give testimonials, and this is another way to do so that attracts people already on your website. It’s an excellent strategy to snag the opinions of some of those repeat customers.
One strategy is to add a popup asking your customer if they’d like to leave a testimonial. Be sure to give them a way to click out of the popup if they prefer. If they click yes, send them over to a submission page to write their testimonial right on the website. With ShareThis’ Popup Builder, you can create an effective popup in minutes – no design skills required.
You could also just point website visitors to a quick submission form to write a testimonial before they leave. You’ll see this on product pages mostly, right by where other reviews display underneath the product information.
7. Make Customer Testimonials Part of a Loyalty Program
Plain and simple: most people are more likely to do something if a reward is attached. Make gathering testimonials part of your customer loyalty program to encourage more reviews. Offer points for each review your customer gives for products or services along with other points they might receive for orders, social media follows, and more.
There’s no need to use all of the above tips to get testimonials. It’s likely that just one or two will work well for you. Plus, each business is different, so you’ll need to figure out which method is best for your business model and customers. Check out this guide to customer testimonials to learn more about different types of testimonials and how they work.
Any of these strategies will help you generate more customer testimonials, but there’s also another way to get positive feedback in a less-official way: by making it easy for your website or blog visitors to share your content by installing social media share buttons on your site. With a simple click, they can share an article or page with their networks, adding any commentary (or praise!) they like. Your customers won’t even feel like they’re providing a testimonial, yet these shares create social proof that can have a significant impact on brand awareness, website traffic, and your bottom line.
